It’s time I finally recap my experience at Blogworld 2009 in Las Vegas.
In one word “Awesome”.
Since I’ve been working for myself consulting and building Charles & Hudson I spend a huge amount of time alone and behind the computer screen and not nearly enough time building face-to-face relationships and hearing from folks who have something to share about blogging and the business of blogging.
The conference started out with a keynote from Richard Jalichandra, CEO of Technorati. I’ve been a Technorati user for years and often referred to it to see who linked to me and to measure the reach of my blog. In the past year or two I’ve become much less reliant on Technorati as Google started indexing blogs and I started pulling in real-time referral data from my RSS reader, Google Alerts and Sitemeter. Jalichandra is convinced that Technorati has changed with the market and will again be a leader in the blogosphere. Time will tell but if I no longer reference Technorati since my authority fell back to 1 and never updates.
The greatest bit of serendipity from the show started from the keynote when I happened to be seated behind Rebecca Orlov. Rebecca and I had emailed briefly through her Blog Out Loud organization in Los Angeles and at the keynote she was furiously tweeting the event. I couldn’t help but notice her laptop screen was opened to her Blog Out Loud Twitter account so I made an introduction. As nice as she was online she was even sweeter in person and we’ve since struck up a great friendship which was enough to make Blogworld a success for me. Fortunately there were many more people to meet and things to learn.
After the keynote I took some time to walk through the Expo. It was a small selection of vendors and in less than an hour I was able to narrow down who I felt revisiting later in the show.
My intention for attending Blogworld was to reinvigorate and refocus my blogging efforts. Monetizing my blog and building an audience were the workshops I was most keen on attending. One of the most amazing panels consisted of Brian Clark of Copyblogger, Darren Rowse of Problogger, John Chow and Zac Johnson. Brian and Darren by far provided the most insight for me and what I’m trying to achieve. I’ve been reading Problogger for about a year now and both he and Brian keep things simple and not too sensationalized.
I came up through the blogging ranks in NYC and the blogs/websites I admired were successful through hard work, great style and obsessive focus. Gawker, Curbed, Gothamist and Apartment Therapy were all daily reads for me and to this day none of them place a 300×250 Google Adsense ad in the left middle of their content. Obviously they are big enough to survive via other means but their editorial focus hasn’t “sold out” and that’s a line I’m trying to walk with Charles & Hudson.
Another great monetizing workshop was most interesting to me because the moderator Dave Taylor kept things on target. I had the pleasure to chat with Dave briefly at the expo and like most folks I ran into at Blogworld he was open, knowledgeable and showed interest in my work. Dave made it clear that when monetizing blogs you need to keep moving and adjusting on a weekly, daily or hourly basis. If a program or product isn’t performing to your standards try something else. You can always go back to something that worked but you’ll never learn and possibly earn more if you don’t give other networks or ads a shot.
The main theme I took away from Blogworld was “Influence”. I sat in on Micah Baldwin as he and his panel chatted about building authority and creating relationships. This is something I’ve always strongly believed in and through Micah’s candid approach and by sharing his own experiences building brands it was easy to see how important this is. Chris Brogan the author of Trust Agents is another must follow for social media advice. He’s got a long running disagreement with Guy Kawasaki as to how Twitter should be used and although I’ve been a longtime fan of Guy I’ve got to side with Chris on this one. Twitter is about relationships and real people not automated tweets and bombarding followers with multiple tweets of the same content. I can’t follow Guy anymore because of this. Just because a tool can do something doesn’t mean you do it.
To summarize. The attendees and speakers I met were all interested in learning and teaching and everyone seemed open to sharing. The Tweet screens that were up at every keynote and speaker panel was a fun interactive way to follow the discussion as well as ask questions and take part in the conversation from your seat. There was so much more I didn’t have time to check out such as the video and podcast sessions. There was also a large contingent that swears by affiliate marketing but I have yet to really give that a shot.
I’d definitely recommend this conference to anyone interested in starting a blog, building their blog, growing their audience or monetizing their site.
See you in 2010!
